Coast Guard Banned from Beamount

odyssey06

Odyssey 2005 wrote: »

Moaning and complaining about any af the rescue helicopters landing in the vicinity of the hospital is akin to objecting to a garda car ,fire brigade or ambulances driving down their road on their way to an emergency. They should be told to fook off,it's an emergency vehicle and can go where it is deemed safe by the crew to go, they are trained to the nth degree and safety is foremost in their minds.

The situation you describe would be accuate, if there was someone on the playing pitch injured and in need of emergency assistance and an ambulance had to go onto the pitch to get close to the situation. But this is not a public road, it is not a once off emergency situation... we know the helicopter is going to need to land again in future. Proper facilities need to be put in place for it. Someone else's football pitch is not a proper facility.

If it was so important that the helicopters be able to land on hospital helipads, one wonders why in the tender lighter displacement wasn't specified?

Skedaddle

The exact same thing happened at CUH which is the only other emergency neurosurgical unit in Ireland - The helipad was removed to make way for some buildings or car parking and never reinstated, resulting in a similar situation where patients need to be airlifted to Cork Airport which is a similar distance to CUH as Beaumont is from Dublin Airport and also suffers from traffic.

In Cork the same thing was happening - use of near by sports pitches for emergency traffic.

It isn't reasonable for the hospital to make permanent use of a football pitch, and while I don't agree with the residents blocking access entirely, I can see their frustration.

I find this a lot with the health service here, crisis situations become normality.
Even getting patients to and from a field seems crazy. A proper hospital helipad has all the facilities for getting people to and from the hospital on paved walkways and quickly.

We seem to have created a load of difficulties for hospitals with helipads for some reason. In a lot of other countries, they're on the roof.

Land --- > Stretcher to lift ---> Straight to trauma unit / theatre.

In Ireland land... stretchered across uneven bumpy, muddy field, through the carpark, across a big campus, in the door...

You're talking about a few million Euro that's been clipped on what is a really serious emergency facility that should be at these hospitals.

Both are huge (by Irish standards) over 800 bed acute hospitals with very specialised major trauma services, specifically needing helicopter access. If you get a brain injury you need to get to one of them FAST and there is nowhere else to go.

Both have budgets in the region of €360 million per year.

Helipad cost for the two of them maybe max 5 million in total for both.

Having no dedicated helipads is a complete and utter joke in 2018. There is no resource issue here and this has been rolling on and on and on and on....

This whole mess sounds typical of the HSE - one endless omnishambles.

Billgirlylegs

Coast Guard banned from Beaumont?
Grizzle, grizzle staff suiting themselves
Grizzle grizzle neighbours complaining about noise.

The hospital (like most of our attempts at infrastructure ) was planned, costed and designed by idiots and shoved into a corner of a massive site.
it was a dreadful excuse for a hospital when it opened and has been added to piecemeal ever since.

The 12 tonne helicopter lands on grass in the middle of a housing estate.
Do you think there are safety concerns at all?
These helicoptors have also used St Vincents GAA grounds to land, and are substantial pieces of equipment.

The previous "landing site" was also unsuitable and was re-allocated to provide parking for staff, to alleviate the pressure on public parking spaces.
The public were parking on suburban streets, blocking residents from access to their driveways, blocking roads, and parking dangerously.

The two groups of "nimbys" are on different sides of the hospital and have no connection with one another or indeed to the Staff.
Do you think three different groups having justified, civil issues might suggest the problem isn't a matter of moaning about inconvenience.

I don't live in the area and it does not affect me directly, but I am familiar with the site, and in my opinion, yes they are justified in their complaint.
As do the authorities.

Skedaddle

Multistory carpark with a helipad roof seems to be the solution that would work in both of those hospitals. You’d massively improve parking by removing reliance on wasteful surface parking and gain a useful helipad.

TallGlass

I forgot I actually got a video of the helicopter in said field during the summer.

Come to think of it the take off nearly blew me off sitting on my motorbike.

I'm on two sides here watching the video. The residence have a point, but I think they would have been smarter to ask it to continue landing there while pushing for a permanent solution. If I had a head injury and was in that helicopter. They could winch me down for all I care if it ment gain vital minutes.

Why Dublin Airport? There are plenty more fields closer that they could land in. OBI can land them there and is closer than Dublin Airport and also would be a distance from houses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_Vo0X54h6s

Skedaddle

The problem here is that in the past we didn't really think 'big' about infrastructure. Everything was done on the cheap / small scale / piecemeal projects.

That's how most of our hospitals are shoehorned into small sites.

Dublin should really have several large medical campuses that have enough space for serious parking, helipads, big facilities and are pleasant to actually spend time on. Instead, it has a load of cramped sites and facilities scattered to the four winds with ambulances moving people around.

For example, if you look at something like cancer treatment in the Mater, they're constantly ferrying patients over to Beaumont and to St James by ambulance because they're missing key facilities. Every hospital in the region is in the same boat.

If you look at Ireland in total, there's only one hospital that classifies as a "Level 1 Trauma Facility" i.e. has all of the services it needs on one campus, and that's CUH in Cork and again some HSE bright spark decided to remove its helipad to makeway for buildings and then didn't replace it.

We need to also consider going up a lot higher on these campuses that we do have. There's no reason why many of them couldn't be significantly taller. Even 8 to 10 stories would be plenty. They are absolutely not in architecturally significant areas or areas of great natural beauty.

Tallaght - 70s suburbia.
Beaumont - 50s-70s suburbia.
Vincent's - 50s-60s suburbia.
Blanchardstown / Connolly - Almost open fields.
CUH - 50s-70s suburbia.


The Mater - Old historic area. No space.
James' - Old historic area. Limited space.

So naturally enough they squeezed the new children's hospital onto the site with no space at all for no logical reason.

If the HSE had any sense in Dublin you would be focusing development to create a major facility in Blanchardstown and also seeking to acquire lands somewhere around Dublin for another major facility which could be developed as a proper campus.

Dublin has a whole collection of small/medium hospitals none of which seem to be able to cover everything and it's all down to pandering to historical nonsense, sniffling snobbery and nonsense that goes on between three medical schools and various religious orders, trusts etc and nothing about creating a serious public health system in the region. It's like we look at every single vested interest before the overall outcome of the decision to plan a major health facility.

Cork's slightly less impacted because there's only one medical school and slightly less religious orders / trusts involved, but even there they tried to create a huge health complex at CUH and it's still not big enough as a site and they've managed to build into a corner.

Nekarsulm

While I accept the details posted about the size of area needed for a Sikorsky to land, the weight element is not a problem for a multi story car park to sustain.

Any full size 4x4 or luxury car weights 2 tons.
Park 6 LandCruisers or Volvo SUV's in a row side by side in a multi story car park, and that's the weight of a Sikorsky sitting there, and no problems whatsoever.
Your average car park level probably has 40 to 60 tons of vehicles sitting on the area needed to set down a 12 ton chopper.

worded

RasTa wrote: »

Ah yeah, those lazy hospital staff. Sitting around all day doing nothing.

On their handy 12 hour shifts with 30 min hand over so it’s a 13 hour shift, or way longer, sometimes a few days in a row. Fcuk me I’d need a helicopter home after the hours some med people work

markpb

Nekarsulm wrote: »

While I accept the details posted about the size of area needed for a Sikorsky to land, the weight element is not a problem for a multi story car park to sustain.

Any full size 4x4 or luxury car weights 2 tons.
Park 6 LandCruisers or Volvo SUV's in a row side by side in a multi story car park, and that's the weight of a Sikorsky sitting there, and no problems whatsoever.
Your average car park level probably has 40 to 60 tons of vehicles sitting on the area needed to set down a 12 ton chopper.

Do those cars regularly drop from the ground in a controlled fall with all 12t being supported by six parking spaces?

If it was as simple as you say, do you think the coast guard would have thought of it already?

Nekarsulm

markpb wrote: »

Do those cars regularly drop from the ground in a controlled fall with all 12t being supported by six parking spaces?

If it was as simple as you say, do you think the coast guard would have thought of it already?

So just pour a second reinforced slab spanning 4 support columns.....
It's not like there's no suspension on a Sikorsky.
If you asked an engineer they'd have a solution in a couple of days, but when you involve politicians, "interest groups" and allow every dog and divil from Finian Cuba Libre McGrath to Dail finance committees and Richard Briers types (Ever decreasing circles)to stick their oar in, then nothing ever gets done.

Markcheese

If it was so important that the helicopters be able to land on hospital helipads, one wonders why in the tender lighter displacement wasn't specified

That kind of takes my breath away, maybe they tendered for the type of helicopters that could fly out to sea in all weather's 24/7.?

I know a lot of the car parking in CUH is surface parking (ie. Not multistorey, it shouldn't be impossible to find a section that is over 50meters by 50meters near the a and é and not impeded by buildings and power lines and place a single storey helipad above the car park.
Also don't need to put one at every hospital, one major hospital per city/region would do.

odyssey06

Markcheese wrote: »

If it was so important that the helicopters be able to land on hospital helipads, one wonders why in the tender lighter displacement wasn't specified

That kind of takes my breath away, maybe they tendered for the type of helicopters that could fly out to sea in all weather's 24/7.?

Not sure why it takes your breath away... earlier comments on the thread indicate that the Sea King could land on the helipads. I don't know the relative performances of the two helicopters in terms of range & all weathers. The Sea King was in use by the Royal Navy for search and rescue and the Irish coastguard which suggests rugged performance.

It seems reasonable to ask if helipad use was a criteria in selection of a replacement for the Sea King, or was it only realised after the replacement went operational that it could no longer use the helipads that were in situ.

Skedaddle

It's weird how these structural issues seem to only apply in Ireland. I assume we've different laws of physics here. Create a proper structure and you should be able to leave anything on it safely!

A helicopter could drop out of the sky, but they generally don't.

The other issue in Ireland is the use of inappropriate helicopters for air ambulance service.

There really should be a regional air ambulance service setup properly based at Dublin, Cork and probably Knock.

Heavy lift rescue helicopters shouldn't be getting used as regular air ambulance.

If you have to land occasional heavy copters on the ground, then yeah you have to do it. However, that should only be for air sea rescue and so on.

We need a small fleet or proper air ambulances, capable or landing on hospital helipads and landing in more restricted circumstances for emergencies too.

You absolutely need landing facilities at key trauma centres and you need to be able to land small helicopters at basically every other hospital so you can air lift someone to one of those centres should it be necessary.

We have plenty of money to get these things right, but we don't.

Nekarsulm

Skedaddle wrote: »

It's weird how these structural issues seem to only apply in Ireland. I assume we've different laws of physics here.

Create a proper structure and you should be able to leave anything on it safely!

A helicopter could drop out of the sky, but they generally don't.

The other issue in Ireland is the use of inappropriate helicopters for air ambulance service.

There really should be a regional air ambulance service setup properly based at Dublin, Cork and probably Knock.

Heavy lift rescue helicopters shouldn't be getting used as regular air ambulance.

Go take a look at the old Central Bank on Dame Street.
8 slabs on a central spine.
Now plans are in for a bar/restuarant on the roof, with capacity for 300 people.
That's 20 tons, moving about and possibly all on one side of the overhang, jumping up and down to music .
But 12 tons on a multi story is impossible....
The lifts on car parks are probably too small for a stretcher trolley, though.

Skedaddle

Why would you build something this this on the central bank?!
You're talking about a purpose built facility with the appropriate structure. Not building a helipad on an existing building.

Also why would you build it with small lifts?! Unless of course you were the health planners in this country, who would probably specifically request escalators.

Even just building a simple tall multistory and clearing the necessary space for a helipad at ground level might be an idea.

There's no reason whatsoever there can't be way more parking at all of these hospitals by just stacking it and it clears tons of space.

I find planners here like to imagine everyone will go to hospital on public transport or a bike, so put in grossly undersized carparks.

Nekarsulm

I was commenting on the possibility of putting a heli-pad on top of an existing hospital multi story car park, and the load bearing capabilities of properly designed reinforced concrete.

Skedaddle

I'd be talking about taking say the flat surface visitors carpark and maybe going up 6 or more levels on half of it and clearing space for a helipad and massively improving parking.

They charge enough for the parking too so it's not like they wouldn't recoup the cost!

Looking at it on Google maps there is plenty of space for a surface helipad by just rearranging the carparks.

It's the same at CUH. They simply need to organise the space better and stack the parking to make more space on site.

We've a terrible fear of going beyond 1 story here. Big flat spread of hospitals on confined sites is a ridiculous use of space and surface parking is beyond nuts were space is clearly at a premium.

We can manage do this at shopping centres and airports but not hospitals for some reason.

With a bit of thought and architecture on both of those sites, you'd entirely solve the parking issues and the helipad lack of space.

You can also use structures on the ground around helipads to reduce their impact on the site using baffles / metal fins to ensure that the down thrust isn't being channelled towards buildings and passers-by.

markpb

Skedaddle wrote: »

It's weird how these structural issues seem to only apply in Ireland.

Maybe you're only aware of it being a problem in Ireland?

Patients face delays in receiving life-saving treatment because helicopters in the UK’s search-and-rescue fleet are barred from landing at many hospitals. Safety regulations prevent the new helicopters from landing on helipads on top of buildings, forcing pilots to set down casualties at alternative sites. [...] the Sikorsky S92 is not allowed to land on elevated helipads if the landing area is judged too small for the aircraft’s size in an emergency such as engine failure.

The Times

And for those people who still maintain that you can easily plop a helipad on the roof of a car park, here's what the UK CAA say:

However, heliports at rooftop level are generally more expensive to build as they require integral fire fighting facilities and have needed dedicated trained crews to operate the fire-fighting equipment (this dictated that the future ongoing operational costs were high)

Skedaddle

So clear surface car parks and stack the parking!

Multistory carparks aren't exactly mind blowing complex facilities and they would actually reduce people's need to walk long distances to the hospital, get wet in bad weather and so on.

Done right, you would potentially dramatically increase the availability of on site parking and also leave sufficient space for a simple helipad without the need for long walks through muddy sports fields and have a facility that's entirely in control of the hospital.

Ben D Bus

markpb wrote: »

Maybe you're only aware of it being a problem in Ireland?


The Times

And for those people who still maintain that you can easily plop a helipad on the roof of a car park, here's what the UK CAA say:

I don't know if anyone else ever watches 24 hours in A&E, a UK fly-on-the-wall documentary but whenever a heli lands on the rooftop helipad, there is always a fire crew fully kitted up for it's arrival. Rooftop helipads are not trivial.

I do agree that most air ambulance operations would ideally be operated by dedicated aircraft suitable to the task rather than heavy craft designed for long range SAR or military operations.

Nekarsulm

It's scenarios like this, which make the positioning of the new childrens hospital all the more bizarre.
Too much political interference, when (in my opinion) Connolly in Blanchardstown offered easy transport links and extensive grounds.

Odyssey 2005

Nekarsulm wrote: »

It's scenarios like this, which make the positioning of the new childrens hospital all the more bizarre.
Too much political interference, when (in my opinion) Connolly in Blanchardstown offered easy transport links and extensive grounds.

^^^Nail on the head post ^^^

AndrewJRenko

Nekarsulm wrote: »

Too much political interference, when (in my opinion) Connolly in Blanchardstown offered easy transport links and extensive grounds.

Did you read the Dolphin report from the esteemed committee of medical and planning experts on the siting of the new hospital?

Nekarsulm

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

Did you read the Dolphin report from the esteemed committee of medical and planning experts on the siting of the new hospital?

I didn't read the report, other than what was reported in the newspapers.
I do know that when my mum was receiving treatment for skin cancer, five years ago, parking was a nightmare.
It was so busy a site that you had to draw up at the door, and leave a 92 year old frail woman to make her own way in and upstairs because 1) you couldnt leave the car at the door obviously, and 2) you had no way of knowing how long it would take yiu to find a spot to park. Could be 2 minutes or 20.
And that's before development of a hospital started, and before they found a 3 foot main sewer running through the middle of the site that no one knew about!

neris

[QUOTE=Ben D Bus;105792769 there is always a fire crew fully kitted up for it's arrival. Rooftop helipads are not trivial.
[/QUOTE]

they havent allowed helicopters land on buildings in Manhatten since the late 70s when a chopper turned over on a rooftop and killed 5 people including one on the street

AndrewJRenko

Nekarsulm wrote: »

I didn't read the report, other than what was reported in the newspapers.
I do know that when my mum was receiving treatment for skin cancer, five years ago, parking was a nightmare.
It was so busy a site that you had to draw up at the door, and leave a 92 year old frail woman to make her own way in and upstairs because 1) you couldnt leave the car at the door obviously, and 2) you had no way of knowing how long it would take yiu to find a spot to park. Could be 2 minutes or 20.
And that's before development of a hospital started, and before they found a 3 foot main sewer running through the middle of the site that no one knew about!

And do you reckon that your personal experiences as family member of a patient beats the professional experience of ten leading medical and planning experts who spent months looking at this issue?

Nekarsulm

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

And do you reckon that your personal experiences as family member of a patient beats the professional experience of ten leading medical and planning experts who spent months looking at this issue?

Yes.
Because reading the report highlights the fact that the medical experts wanted to be close to the city centre, and that trumps patients and relatives requirements.

markpb

Nekarsulm wrote: »

Yes.

That says a lot about why it takes so long to get anything done in this country. Everyone has an opinion but they mistake it for fact. the report said that making JC a national hospital would result in a lower quality of medical care (for reasons they spell out). Your parking would be easier but your mum would be less likely to recover. Which is more important?

Nekarsulm

So a brand new hospital in Blanchardstown would deliver lower standards of care to a brand new hospital in an inner city site?
Why is that?

And of course everyone has an opinion, it's not against the law you know.
Ultimately everyone's opinion didnt matter, the people signing the contracts wanted it there, mainly for political purposes, and the consultants probably wanted to be closer to their private patients.

markpb

Nekarsulm wrote: »

So a brand new hospital in Blanchardstown would deliver lower standards of care to a brand new hospital in an inner city site?
Why is that?

Read the report.